The Bjelkemander was the term given to the zonal system of electorates in the Australian State of Queensland, used by State Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen to consolidate his hold on executive power in the 1970s and 80s. Under this system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters as metropolitan, a system greatly favouring political parties deriving their support from rural areas.

Contents

1 Origin of the term 2 History 3 Electoral effect 4 Other Electoral Factors 5 End of the Bjelkemander

Origin of the term

The original Gerrymander was a term coined by his opponents to lampoon Governor Gerry of Massachusets, who in 1812, redrew electoral boundaries to favor his party. The term has since come to describe any electoral malapportionment. Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistribution was named the "Bjelke-mander".

History

From 1910 to 1949, Queensland had a one voter-one vote-one value electoral system. In 1949 the Labor Party conducted a revision which varied the number of voters in each electorate according to their size and distance from Brisbane, the State capital in the extreme south-east of the huge state. Although difficulties in transport and communication were given as the reasons to reduce the size of remote and thinly-populated electorates, the effect was to give a huge advantage to the Labor Party, which at that time drew its voting strength from rural areas, a consequence of the party's formation in the outback Queensland town of Barcaldine half a century earlier.

Ironically, a newly-elected Country Party representative named Joh Bjelke-Petersen spoke out against the redistribution, saying that it meant that "the majority will be ruled by the minority" and that the Labor government was telling the people "whether you like it or not, we will be the Government".

In 1971, Bjelke-Petersen, now risen to become State Premier, proposed to refine the gerrymander to favour his party at the expense of his Coalition partners the Liberal Party as well as Labor. Labor, now drawing its support from urban concentrations of workers, opposed the scheme, as did enough of the Liberals to defeat the bill in Parliament. However, Bjelke-Petersen worked during a four-month Parliamentary recess to redraft the scheme just enough to ensure the support of the Liberal Party and the redesigned gerrymander was used as the basis for the May 1972 election, from which Bjelke-Petersen emerged victorious as Premier despite only receiving 20% of the vote, a smaller percentage than either Liberal (22.2%) or Labor (46.7%). However, as Bjelke-Petersen's Country Party had won 26 seats compared to the 21 of the Liberals, the Country Party was the senior party in the coalition, which held 47 seats, thereby putting the Labor Party with 33 seats into opposition.

In 1977 another redistribution eliminated some Liberal seats, reducing the internal threat to the Country Party (now renamed the National Party).

Electoral effect

The putative reasons given for reducing the number of voters in remote and rural electorates have some validity. In 1949 the electorate of Gregory was larger in area than Great Britain, but contained fewer than 6000 voters. In addition it contained vast areas of desert and the few communities were poorly served by road and rail links. Other electorates were almost as large, and in fact the four electorates of Gregory, Cook, Flinders and Mount Isa together comprised nearly two thirds of Queensland's entire landmass. The difficulties of keeping in touch with the population over such enormous and diverse regions were cited by both Labor (in 1949) and the Country Party in 1971 as reasons for malapportionment.

At the 1956 election the change from the previous one vote-one value system was dramatic. The seat of Mount Gravatt had 26307 voters and the seat of Charters Towers just 4367, a ratio of six to one. If the number of votes cast per party is divided by the number of seats won, the effect on party representation is underscored. In 1956 the Labor Party needed 7000 votes to win each seat, the Country Party 9900, and the Liberals 23800. Using the Dauer-Kelsay Index, which calculates the smallest percentage of voters needed to win an election, the theoretical ideal being just over 50%, at the 1957 election this number was 39.1%, meaning that the non-Labor parties would have required more than 60% of the vote to win.

Other low scores in Australian electoral history were the infamous Playford gerrymander with a low of 23.4% on the Dauer-Kelsay Index, and Victoria in 1974, registering 40.3%.

Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 revision was actually a step towards democracy, with the index rising to 44.9%, and the disparity in electorate sizes reduced with Pine Rivers (16758 voters) and Gregory (6723) marking the extremes. In terms of vote per seat, the Country Party needed 7000 votes to win each seat, Liberal 9600 and Labor 12800.

However, the effect was that Bjelke-Petersen was Premier of the State with just 20% of the votes. The following table shows the figures for the 1972 election:

Party	Votes Cast	Percentage	Seats Won	Percent of Seats
Labor	424002	46.7	33	40.2
Liberal	201596	22.2	21	25
Country	181404	20.0	26	31.1
DLP	69757	7.7	0	0
Independent	23951	2.6	0	2.4
Other	6236	0.7	0	0
Invalid	14817	1.6	0	0

Bjelke-Petersen, as leader of the Country Party, held 26 seats, which was more than his coalition partners the Liberals with 21. That made his party the senior partner and therefore he was the leader of the Government. The Labor Party, although having more votes and more seats than either Country or Liberal Parties, was outvoted by the two combined, and became the Opposition.

It can also be seen from the above table that the DLP had 7.7% of the vote, but won no seats at all. Most of these votes flowed through preferential voting away from the Labor Party, exacerbating the effect of the "Bjelkemander".

However, if the above figures are used with proportional representation, in effect treating the entire State as one multi-member electorate and removing any effects of gerrymander or malapportionment, the results would have been ALP 39, Coalition 36, DLP 5, and Independents 2. Labor would have found it impossible to govern without the support of the DLP, an extremely unlikely scenario.

Other Electoral Factors

The malapportionment favouring country areas helped Labor in 1949 onwards and the Country Party from 1957. The 1972 redistribution introduced a gerrymander effect favouring the Country Party, by which boundaries were drawn to consolidate Labor-voting populations and diversify Country supporters. A seat won with 50.1% of the vote was just as good in Parliament as one with 100% support. Liberal and especially Labor voters were usually found in identifiable "clumps" within Brisbane and the regional cities, a reflection of the income levels available to workers and the middle class dividing them between desirable and less desirable suburbs.

The metropolis of Brisbane was a zone of limited support for Bjelke-Petersen's Country Party, but fertile ground was found in the regional centres where Labor populations could be aggregated together and the rural voters of the surrounding districts distributed to electorates where they would be of most use to the Country Party.

End of the Bjelkemander

With the resignation of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen in 1987 and the return of a Labor Government under Wayne Goss in 1989, the way was clear for further improvement to the State electoral system, which was achieved by a redistribution in 1991.